Powers That Be (25 page)

She paused to take a deep breath and then, with a grin, added, “Seems like Petaybee’s not supposed to have volcanoes in that spot.”

“Bunka, take a bowl of stew over to Adak and see if there’s any more news, will you?” Clodagh said in a tone that was not a request.

“Sure, Clodagh,” Bunny said.

“You’re the one I’m to ask about transport?” Steve Margolies asked, looking perplexedly at the big woman.

“Eat first,” Clodagh said hospitably, and handed him a bowl before filling a bigger one for Bunny to take to Adak. “You need good food after that stuff at the river, and for anything else you want to do.”

Steve dragged a tired hand across his face as if he had only just remembered an essential like eating. He accepted the bowl and found a spot to sit, then took a good look around the room.

“Frag!” Steve Margolies exclaimed, his eyes wide with astonishment. “Look at Frank. He’s
petting
that cat.”

“Sure, it’s fine exercise for his fingers,” Clodagh was saying matter-of-factly. “Everyone knows animals are good for distressed folk.”

Bunny was grinning, too, as she carried the stew bowl out the door on her way to Adak.

Despite the lid to keep the heat in, she had to walk carefully to keep from spilling the stew. It would keep hot long enough, however, for her to make a few short stops on her way to Adak’s. She slipped in at her own place, where she traded her soaked and stiffened hide boots for her breakup muckers and put on a kettle of food for her dogs. She looked in at Moira’s window. The cousins and the dogs must have come and gone again, for Seamus was sitting large as life by the stove, shoveling Moira’s soup and bread into his face. Moira was busy cooking. Now that Bunny knew that Seamus had made it back okay, she could continue with an easy heart.

Passing Maloney’s again, she was greeted by Dinah’s unhappy howl. She would pet and reassure the dog on the way back. Right now, not only was Adak’s stew cooling but also a clever dog like Dinah might try to have first grabs at it. So she simply clucked reassuringly at the dog and kept going.

Six or seven snocles sat parked outside Adak’s shed, but they had not been cleaned, serviced, or fueled, and were still covered with melting slush, water, and mud. Inside, Adak, headphones over his ears and microphone at his lips, was hunched over the radio. Bunny slid into a chair beside him and shoved the stew in his direction. He looked a little startled to see it appear in front of him, but accepted it without question. Lines were etched deeply into his face and his eyes looked hollow, but his whole body was taut with nervous energy. Early breakup and a new volcano a-borning might be considered catastrophes, but the end result was that today had produced the most excitement Kilcoole had seen since the first expeditionary team had been lost in a tsunami down on the southern edge of the ice pack.

“Well, I’m sorry about that, SpaceBase,” Adak was saying with a certain amount of agitation, “but until the next hard freeze, the snocles aren’t reliable as transportation for a trip clear out there. Over.” He managed to spoon some stew into his mouth. “Oh, sure and they’ll run on the snow, that’s not the problem. The problem is the rivers, you see, and if you don’t believe me, you can ask yer lads as got fished out of them today. Over.

“Is that so? Well, I’m sorry to hear that, too. It’s a shame about Dr. Fiske’s shuttle crashin’ and to be sure we
do
understand the urgency and all. Over.” He hurriedly ate some more.

“No, of course flyin’ over it is impossible if the ash and smoke are as thick as you say. My suggestion would be to get yourself some of them crane-copters and have them hoist the snocles to the edge of the affected area and then see if the snocles’ll drive at all in the ash. You’re still going to be havin’ the same problem with slushy going as we have here though. Over.

“The rivers of course, man! Petaybee has more rivers and lakes than you can shake a stick at, and who knows which ones are thawin’ this early? Normally the high country would stay frozen longer, but a volcano, now, that’s a chancy thing. I’m not a scientific man like yerself, but it seems to me such a thing would warm the country considerable. Over.

“Like I said, air-hoist a snocle to where O’Shay picked up the wounded. I’ll wager Yana Maddock can drive it even if your two officer lads don’t know how. Over.

“They
what?
When? How’d you find out? Uh—very well, over.

“Yes, then, I do see the urgency. Look here, I’ll try to get some of the local folk on it in the meantime. The point is, machinery just doesn’t do awfully well in some of the conditions we have hereabouts right now. That’s why we use animals. I’ll get back to you. Right. Over.”

“What,”
Bunny asked impatiently, “was that about Yana?”

“Well, seems O’Shay radioed for help as soon as he was airborne and the other copter passed him at the halfway point. He was almost to SpaceBase when they radioed back that they were bringing in the rest of the survivors, but that Fiske, Giancarlo, and Corporal Levindoski overpowered Major Maddock and forced her to go with them into the flow area to look for Dr. Fiske. The higher-ups are that frantic to be after them, but the ash would clog any machines they got and it’s not that good for the beasts either.”

“I’ll bet the curlies can do it, if anything can,” Bunny said staunchly. “They were bred for sand and snow back on Earth, and they can close off their nostrils if they need to, and their eyes have a protective lid.”

“Maybe so,” Adak said, taking a slurp of stew. “Hard to figure why anybody’d want to risk a good curly to go after some company bigwig, though.”

15

Gun in hand, Yana held off Giancarlo, Torkel, and Ornery until the wounded were loaded. Torkel had relented enough to help, while Ornery and Giancarlo stood by, glaring malevolently at Yana. The last thing O’Shay did before he slammed the door shut, was to fling out a red-and-white-striped rectangle. Picking it up, Yana identified it as an emergency rations pack and blessed the pilot’s thoughtfulness. The four remaining survivors of the expedition were suffering from shock, and the high-energy rations would do much to revive them.

“If he thinks that’s going to save him from a court-martial, he’s got another thing coming.” Giancarlo snorted as the copter lifted off. To Ornery-eyes he barked, “Don’t just stand there, Levindoski. Commandeer that pack. We’ll need those supplies on our search and rescue of Dr. Fiske and his party.”

“Uh-uh,” Yana said. “Not so fast, Colonel. You’re not commandeering shit just yet. These folks need to chow down first.” She pointed to the nearest survivor, a gaunt-faced man whose pocket nametag was half burned off. “Connelly?” she said, reading what was left. “Why don’t you distribute? You’ll want the yellow ones—they’ll replace electrolytes and boost your energy levels.”

Keeping one eye on her and the gun she held, Connelly retrieved the sack. With a pang of pity Yana saw that he was sufficiently fatigued so that it took him three yanks to break the tabs, and half the bars and drink packets spewed over the ground. She stepped back and motioned for the others to help.

“Wait!” Torkel cried with a tinge of desperation. Yana turned to him. His eyes, watching the survivors scoop up the supplies, reflected a struggle with his emotions for the sort of control and charm that had always been a hallmark of his command personality. “Yana, please be reasonable. You know we’re going to
need
those . . .”

“Torkel, if I was you I’d shut the frag up,” Yana said, waving the gun at him. “You didn’t exactly cover yourself with glory trying to take the copter away from the wounded and you’re not improving things by trying to prevent the distribution of emergency rations to these survivors. As for me, I ate a while back.”

Connelly, who had been handing the packets out to the others, contemptuously threw four at Torkel’s feet. “Sorry, buddy. Didn’t know you’d missed your bloody lunch.”

“It’s not that,” Torkel said, wisely leaving the packets alone for the moment. “She’s distorting this incident to make us look bad in your eyes, hoping you’ll aid her.”

“Which you are now doing by eating those rations,” Giancarlo said sternly. “If you value your careers, you’ll listen to Captain Fiske here and cooperate with our mission.”

“Careers!” said another man, whose ashy parka bore the name “O’Neill.” “Sure now, Colonel darlin’,” he went on, his face angry, his words soft, and the Irish in his accent dangerously broad, the way the Petaybean accent became when mocking the stupidity of higher-ups. “We’re that worried about our careers havin’ just outrun yer volcano there. Seems to me that if it’s our lives we’re after valuin’, the dama’s the one to be listenin’ to.” He deliberately and defiantly chewed and swallowed a large hunk of his ration bar.

“Colonel Giancarlo, please,” Torkel said. “I know you mean well but you’re playing into her hands.”

Watching his face, in which the desperation she had seen before was now suppressed, she saw him begin to calculate the effect of each word and attitude on the survivors. He was smart enough to know that he had alienated them initially, and smart enough to know that if he wanted to regain control of the situation he was going to have to have them on his side. “Folks, you’ll have to forgive Colonel Giancarlo. He doesn’t mean to sound callous but he’s absolutely right. Our mission is one of the utmost priority and this woman has sided with the Petaybean insurgents creating this catastrophe!”

His arm swept across the devastation behind the survivors, the pulsing mud in the valley at their heels, the glow of the volcano visible even through the ashy miasma cloaking the area.

“Right,” Connelly said, “one skinny little woman, with or without help, caused a volcano? I’m a mining engineer, Captain. Pull the other one.”

The third man coughed both to clear his lungs and to get attention. “They might have set strategic charges that
triggered
the volcano.”

“Th-that’s right,” the last survivor, a woman, stammered. Until she had eaten her ration bar, she had been trembling so violently that she had looked on the verge of convulsions; now her fearful glance centered on the presence of the authorities as represented by Torkel, Giancarlo, and Ornery. “Teams have disappeared here before. It can’t all be natural.”

“Damned right it’s not,” Torkel said, following up his advantage. “We were interrogating Maddock here, trying to get information from her to head off this disaster, when it blew up in our faces. Meanwhile, my own father, Dr. Whittaker Fiske, was coming to join a team in your vicinity to suss out the situation.”

“In case you don’t know who Dr. Fiske is,” Giancarlo put in, “he’s assistant chairman of the board, direct descendant of the man who developed the terraforming process that transformed this rock into a viable planet, and is the company’s top expert on the environmental development and stability of all of Intergal’s terraformed holdings.”

“He’s the one man who can save this project and everybody involved with it, which is why you
must
help me find him,” Torkel said, adding with a catch in his voice that could have even been genuine, “and he’s my father. That’s why we tried to supersede your need to move your wounded and effect your own rescue. Another copter would have been here for you immediately, of course, but this woman”—he jerked his thumb at Yana—“took advantage of the pilot’s humanitarian instincts to turn the situation against us. But if one of you will guide me to where the shuttle came down, she won’t be able to stop me from going in after my dad and saving this rock.”

“Okay, who’s it going to be?” Giancarlo demanded. “We need to move here and move fast. You heard Captain Fiske. We need volunteers to take us to the crash site.”

“Say what?” O’Neill asked, not believing what he heard. “We come out of that”—he waved to the steaming valley—“by the skin of our teeth and you’re after us to risk our necks again? You’re bloody nuts!”

The third man just shook his head tiredly. His shoulders were stooped under the weight of a variety of cameras and other instrument packages, as well as under the weight of the terror and pain he had just lived through. The straps kept Yana from seeing all of his name but “Sven” was part of it.

Torkel shook his head firmly, staring O’Neill down. “No. I’m not nuts. I’d never ask you to risk yourselves except that this is absolutely vital. It is imperative to the well-being of this planet and the personnel on it that we find my father with all possible dispatch.”

“Find him? In that?” Sven demanded in a voice rasped harsh by smoke.

“There’s no alternative, man!” Torkel was getting agitated as he looked from Sven to Connelly and then to the other two, the stocky O’Neill and the stammering woman. “You did see the shuttle go down, right?”

Sven and Connelly both nodded.

“Well, where did it go down? Point me out the direction from here. I’ve coordinates, but they’re only good in a copter.”

Sven gave Connelly a long look and then, angling himself, he faced in a west-northwest position. “Near as I can remember it. We were scrambling ourselves by then.”

“Why bother?” O’Neill asked, a trace of exasperation in his voice. “Captain, the shuttle was trying to land just as the volcano blew. The shock wave hit it like a ton of fraggin’ bricks. I saw the craft knocked out of the sky with my own eyes. There’s nobody could survive that.” He obviously felt his own survival was miracle enough for one day.

“That’s not true!” Torkel said, his voice suddenly wild with denial as he grabbed O’Neill’s coat front and began shaking him. “My father has to have survived, you bloody idiot!” Then he realized what he was doing and loosed O’Neill with one more plea. “Don’t discourage me, man. Help me, for pity’s sake.”

Yana had been watching this, also making certain that neither Giancarlo nor Ornery made any sudden moves toward her. She thought maybe Torkel’s emotional display was genuine, but the man was devious—it could as well be a diversionary tactic. She couldn’t take any chances. “Chill out, Torkel,” she said. “These people are exhausted and in shock. They’re not going to be fool enough to risk their lives going back in there.”

But if Torkel was acting, he was doing it with enough conviction that he ignored her waving the gun. “You didn’t actually see the volcanic blast destroy the shuttle, did you?” he demanded of O’Neill.

“No,” O’Neill said tiredly. “It was intact when the force of the blast blew it off course.”

“Ah, but it blew it away from the path of the debris, right?”

“Well, yes. It was debris, too, as far as the volcano was concerned,” O’Neill told him.

“But there could have been survivors of the crash?”

Connelly, who Yana sensed was slowly being convinced by Torkel’s insistence, told him in a weary but not unsympathetic voice, “That was three
hours
ago, Captain, and that volcano’s been raining down and spitting mud out . . .”

Torkel heard the sympathy in the man’s voice and pounced on it. “Will you guide me?”

But he had pushed too hard. Connelly withdrew and favored him with a disbelieving look, shaking his head. “The only one I’m guiding is me, out of here, when the copter gets back.”

“Listen up, Connelly, and the rest of you, too,” Giancarlo said. “Captain Fiske is not just any military captain. As son of Boardmember Fiske, he also holds the position of ranking executive on this planet at this time. Failure to cooperate with him and with this mission will have serious repercussions on your career.”

“So,” Connelly said, “will death. I’m not sticking around here waiting for that mountain to blow again for the
chairman
of the board. Besides, in these flying conditions”—he waved his hand off to the north—“no copter, any copter, would stay airborne for more than ten, maybe fifteen minutes.” He snorted. “You’d do better using your feet.”

When Giancarlo started toward him angrily, Yana spoke up again.

“I wouldn’t, were I you, Colonel,” she said. “They’ve done enough just making it here. And you both should know,” she added, flicking a glance at Torkel, “how useless it would be to fly a copter in there!”

“Then, by all that’s holy”—Abandoning his frantic make-’em-see-reason attitude, Torkel drew himself up into a noble-against-adversity stance. —“I’ll make it on foot. Your packs there,” he said, pointing to the pile slowly accumulating a cover of ash, “can be replaced at company expense when you get back to base. They won’t be of much future use to
you
considering their present condition, but I would very much appreciate being able to scrounge what I need from them.”

Connelly and Sven exchanged looks and shrugged. The woman, with an anxious look at Yana’s gun hand, darted over and extracted a small sack from the pile, skittering back to the protection of her colleagues.

“Might as well. There’s not that much there,” Connelly said, “and if the company’ll make good . . .”

“Of course the company will make good,” Giancarlo snapped. “Your equipment was company issue to begin with. Who else do you think would replace it?”

“I promise you it won’t be debited from your pay,” Torkel said quickly. “And any personal effects you’ve lost will be replaced, as well. The company takes care of its own.”

O’Neill flicked him a resentful glance. “The way you were going to take care of the wounded?”

“Frag it all, O’Neill, I’m not some kind of a monster,” Torkel said, even as he gestured for Giancarlo and Ornery to help him collect the packs. “I told O’Shay to radio for another bird for your wounded and for yourselves. A few minutes would have made no difference to them. You’ll all get out safely. My father, and the crew of that shuttle, are still out there in that inferno.”

Yana couldn’t believe Torkel’s gall, trying to guilt-trip the survivors. He sure was a company man: give with one hand, shuffle the shells, and take with the other! But she had no objections to him going after his father, as long as he didn’t force anyone else to do it, too.

“Knowing how important it is, won’t even one of you guide us?” he implored one more time as the air began throbbing with the sound of an approaching copter.

“Captain,” Connelly said, “we really couldn’t help you. All landmarks will have been destroyed by now, and none of us saw where your father’s craft actually crashed. You’ve got the compass and the coordinates of where it was originally supposed to land.” He scanned the sky anxiously with reddened eyes. “I hope you find him.”

The unmistakable sound of the approaching copter grew louder: it was a Sparrowhawk, if Yana read the sound of it right. Those usually had room to seat the crew members and three more, but there was ample room for others to sit on the floor. Maybe, with a little luck, she could just manage to squeeze herself on board, too.

She relaxed her guard just enough to glance up at the sky, and that was when she was jumped. She had been so busy watching Torkel, Giancarlo, and Ornery that she hadn’t paid any attention to the survivors, and Sven used the distraction of the chopper to grab her gun hand and twist. Before she knew it, she was on the other side of the weapon, nursing a numb wrist.

“Good man!” Torkel cried, leaping forward to relieve Sven of the gun, only to be waved to a standstill.

“He is that,” O’Neill said. “Too good to let you get the drop on us again and try to get
this
helicopter away from us as well, for all the good it would do you.”

Sven was evidently in agreement, for he backed over to the rest of his colleagues in a show of solidarity.

“I wouldn’t have let them do that,” Yana told Sven. “I made them surrender the other copter, didn’t I?”

Sven grunted and shook his head, waving her back to the others.

“We’re sorry, dama,” O’Neill said. “You did help before and we’re that grateful, but maybe you were only doin’ it to get clear of them? Maybe you’d be after commandeerin’ this bird for yourself to make your getaway. We can’t chance it, and we don’t need any more trouble today.”